J.D. Heyes

July 24, 2015

(NaturalNews) It is standard operating procedure that any American sports team competing with teams from other countries at a world event is adorned in red, white and blue clothing, the colors of the U.S. flag. But apparently one globalist American corporation doesn't think much of that tradition and, in effect, appears to be embarrassed or ashamed of the nation's patriotic colors.

As reported by the New York Post's Phil Mushnick, Nike essentially "made U.S. red, white and blue disappear" at the recent World Cup soccer tournament. He noted in a July 9 column:

Charlie Chaplin's intentionally silent 1936 movie "Modern Times" celebrates progress as relentless while condemning it as soulless. Its ostensible "beneficiaries" — people — are run through, ground up and spit out by the toothy wheels of progress.

That brings us to Sunday. If we didn't know better — or worse — we would have wondered why all those U.S. women's team fans in Vancouver were wearing red, white and blue, and waving red, white and blue flags. Their team, after all, was dressed in black, white, and neon green and yellow.

So, was it just a style accident? Hardly. And since the uniforms were

funded with Nike money, then the team and its management had no choice

but to wear them.

Dumbing down patriotism

As Mushnick notes, this stunt at one time would have been unthinkable, even impossible; no U.S. national team would have shown up in anything that wasn't colored red, white and blue. But Mushnick asks the appropriate question: Why would Nike want our national team to wear anything but the national colors? What's more, he asks, "why would the U.S. Soccer Federation not insist that whomever it sells its soul and soles to, the team wear the nation's colors?"

Great questions, to which there are, so far, no answers.

Mushnick also noted that commentators for the television network broadcasting the match, Fox Sports, "chose to play stupid and play us for stupid" by not mentioning a thing about the U.S. national team playing in something other the national colors – even though "the team...appeared in weeks of FOX graphics as red, white and blue..."

"Nike buys everything, including TV's silence, while flaunting its ownership of everything from college teams, to AAU teams, to pro teams, to U.S. national teams, to the hearts and minds of poor kids who are told they're nothing without overpriced, Third World-made Nike status-symbol sneakers," he wrote.

Sadly, advertisers like Nike have drastically changed the way our national teams are represented on the global stage; these are no longer the days of the 1992 basketball Dream Team in Barcelona, Spain, which adorned itself with American flags when they accepted their victory trophy.

Others noted the slight as well. In April, writing for USA Today, Mike Foss began his column critical of the Nike color choices with a picture of an American flag.

Trying to hide our identity?

He further wrote:

It's red, white, and blue. You've seen it since you were in kindergarten and pledged allegiance to it. Whether you know it or not, you probably see it in some capacity every day. When something is American as apple pie, it really isn't. It's as American as the American flag.

His column features a photo of the U.S. soccer team's members, in their Nike-selected colors, below which he wrote:

Wait — how — where — what's happening here? Were these jerseys made by a bitter centuries-old rival of Betsy Ross? Where do you get green from? Or black? Is the U.S. about to compete in the bizarro World Cup?

When a U.S. team competes in a world event while wearing uniforms which do not reflect our national colors, it is both shameful and part of a rising trend which sees an intentional covering up of the red, white and blue. This smacks of a decision by a self-interested corporation that is attempting to cover up America's identity, while pushing its own brand's interests and logos.